Austrian Alpine Club

2011 Membership Survey Report

Preamble

Working Party. The Executive Committee established the Working Party of Fred Nind and Mel Owen on 29^th May 2010.

Objectives.

To identify a greater pool of members eager to help run the Club;
To develop a greater understanding of what the members want from the Club.

Timescale: the 2011 membership year.

Report. The Working Party was asked to produce a written report of the survey findings complete with their recommendations. It was prepared in January 2012 and presented to the two committees shortly thereafter. This version, bereft of recommendations, mirrors the presentation given to the membership at Grasmere 4^th November 2011. The Powerpoint slides shown at that presentation have been incorporated into this webpage.

Mechanism. The membership survey took the form of a questionnaire. The wording and detail were refined by the working party with input from the Executive Committee. The questionnaire was available in the following two formats with identical wording:

The paper form was designed and printed by Martin Haydon and included with the Winter 2010 edition of the AAC(UK) Newsletter. 483 paper forms were completed and submitted.
The electronic form was designed by Blue Level and included as part of the on-line membership application/renewal process. 1022 electronic forms were completed and submitted.

Prize Draw. After eliminating all duplicate and potentially fraudulent entries, 1473 forms were entered in a random draw for a single cash prize of £200.

Mel Owen and Fred Nind took joint control of a spreadsheet of all entries; each entry was allocated a sequential number from 0001 to 1473. No-one else had access to this spreadsheet.
Mike Garrett supplied a random number in the field 0001 to 1473.
The joint winners were Phyllis Meier and Ivor Gerrard of Cape Town, South Africa, who completed one survey form between them.

Budget. The EC (on 28^th August 2010) established a Development Fund budget of £2,000 which was exceeded by almost 50%:

Artwork and origination of paper questionnaire: £100.00
Printing, folding and delivery to fulfilment: £627.00
Blue level development costs for questionnaire: £1,880.00
Payment to Edward Nind for loading paper returns into spreadsheet: £165.00
Prize Draw: £200.00
Total: £2,972.00

Results

Most surveys were probably completed concurrently with MAF completion.

Graph

This shows MAFs and electronic Survey questionnaires at the end of each month, normalised to 100% of their respective quantities at the end of September. It was impossible to include paper questionnaires since no record was made of their receipt date, but most of these were submitted in the early part of the year; had they been included, the two graphs might well have overlapped more perfectly. This should give a high degree of confidence that the survey questionnaires were completed only by members.

The following suggests that few would have been completed after the end of September.

Graph

The results are very accurate.

The sample size of 1505 is remarkable high in relation to the total population of 7613. It means that there was a probability (certainty) of 99% that no individual result was in error by more than 3%, if the sample was completely random; challenging this assertion is the equivalent of challenging the universally accepted laws of statistical science.

But was the sample completely random? It is possible that members' readiness to complete the questionnaire might have been higher amongst genuinely active members than those who only join for our insurance and have no other interest in us. In this case the findings are likely to be slightly more supportive of our newsletter, website and activities programme than the true average.

Between completing this analysis and 1^st December when the survey closed, only a further 6 paper and 16 web questionnaires were submitted; these are too few to have had any significant effect on the reported results, however, these later entries were included in the prize draw (see above). This analysis had to be completed early to catch the 2011 AGM weekend at which these results were presented to the membership.

Q1a. UK Training.

"Please tick those of the following subsidised training courses you might well wish to go on:"

Graph

The following 3 tables revealed the take-up actually achieved:

Table

Q1b. Alpine Training.

"Please tick those of the following subsidised training courses you might well wish to go on"

Graph

The following table revealed the take-up actually achieved:

Table

Note: the courses listed are those designed especially for we English speakers and excludes guided meets instigated by our own members. Note the difference between stated inclinations and actual take-up.

Table

Q2&Q3. The Newsletter.

"With reference to our quarterly club Newsletter please tick just ONE of the following statements, whichever most clearly reflects your views."

Graph

Beware of misreading the finding that fewer than one per cent of members do not even take the Newsletter out of its mail packet. We all receive junk mail, much of it is plastic wrapped. Even if we have no intention whatsoever of even opening such junk mail, let alone reading it, we always have to remove it from its plastic wrapper since the two components are required to be recycled separately.

Graph

With a membership in 2019 of around 16,000, this suggests that we might be mailing 32,000 Newsletter per year to members who do not want them. We have been aware of this for 8 years but have done nothing about it.